Spectators fan themselves in the 90-degree heat, don their jerseys and queue up outside the concessions stand.
The sun is beating down on the field, and unforgivingly on the crowd in the bleachers.
It’s Friday night, in the Cotton Bowl. In September.
By all accounts, it is football season.
But, when Dallas Trinity FC, the first women’s professional soccer team in the city’s history, took the field, they didn’t seem out of place.
Maybe it was the crowd, watching just the second professional women’s soccer game in Dallas — ever.
Or all the people working behind the scenes on Dallas Trinity FC — people like team Chief Executive Officer Jim Neil, President Charlie Neil ’08 and Chief Operating Officer Trip Neil ’03.
The reporters, the photographers and the broadcast crew, linked to NBC’s Peacock for the current season, all help to add to the event.
But there’s something different being built here — some sort of credence that goes beyond the crowd and hype. Although there’s 2,700 people in attendance, it feels like more. Instead of allowing the venue to swallow them up, the fans have embraced their situation — they command the empty space around them.
Despite the recent emergence of the team, it feels like it’s already a part of the community.
Many of the players on the team, especially within the starting lineup, are Dallas natives.
And after playing careers all across the planet, they have come together for a new opportunity and a fresh start, right near home.
The idea behind Dallas Trinity FC emerged around six years ago, but bringing a women’s soccer franchise to Dallas had always been high on the Neil family’s priority list.
“(Dallas Trinity FC) wasn’t any one person’s idea,” Trip said. “You know, our family all had this idea, and we all have a lot of soccer in our background. And, it seemed like the right thing to do. It seems like the right place to be in this market is pro women’s soccer.”
The Neils are Dallas-based and involved in the sport of soccer. Trip and Charlie both played the sport here in high school, and both continued to do so in their respective college careers at Johns Hopkins and Yale, respectively.
They are also experienced with the administrative roles it takes to run a team. Charlie was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and played for three years in the MLB before pivoting into a career where he has worked as an investor, data miner and even in the Texas Rangers front office in baseball operations. Meanwhile, Trip has worked for 11 years as a President/Past President/Director of the US Deaf Soccer Association, where he was charged with the organization and funding of the US deaf national men’s and women’s soccer teams. He has also worked in real estate and other endeavors aimed at helping the deaf community.
So, even though the club may not be profitable at first, the potential for greatness is there.
“It’s an investment in women’s sports and in the community. And, hopefully at some point, it becomes a sustainable enterprise,” Trip Neil said.
Prior to DTFC’s addition, the only pro soccer team in the city was FC Dallas, which is run by the Hunt family. So, it was only fitting that St. Mark’s alumni were heavily involved in the creation of DTFC.
In fact, according to Trip, some of the skills involved in being the COO of a professional franchise can be traced all the way back to the school.
“St Mark’s feeds you a lot — I mean, there’s more to do than can possibly get done, so it’s about figuring out, ‘Okay, how do I invest and optimize my time? How do I best spend my time and resources to get as much done to be successful’?” Trip said.
So, it’s no surprise that they decided to bring Dallas Trinity FC to life, not only as a business opportunity, but as a service to the community – especially to one that had never experienced a professional women’s soccer team before.
“For a long time in our country’s (soccer) history, the women have outperformed the men on the national team level — just go look at how many World Cups and gold medals they’ve won,” Charlie said. “It’s long overdue to have that translate to the professional game, so providing more opportunities for players that have never had the opportunity to play professionally, undeservedly so, is something that Trip and I are both an advocate for.”
Since they both played the sport to a high level in their own lives, the Neil brothers want to extend more opportunities to women’s soccer that may not have existed before.
The Neil family felt 2024 was the right time to bring the team together, though, as women’s sports continues to grow in popularity across the country.
“The growth of women’s sports has now gotten to a point where it’s undeniable,” Charlie said. “We always use the term, it’s not a moment, it’s a movement. And I think that when you combine not just women’s soccer, but what is happening more broadly with women’s sports in basketball and volleyball — I mean, you’re seeing record breaking crowds across sport.”
Ultimately, the brothers hope that Trinity and its players can serve as a positive force in the Dallas community.
“Trip says it all the time: ‘If you can see it, you can be it’,” Charlie Neil said. “And so providing strong female leadership and strong female role models for all of us to go out and watch, is a really important thing, and something that I know our fans will really start to grow and love.”
As the game kicks off, something is brewing. The stands are beginning to populate again. The team is seeing a lot of the ball — despite that, Trinity’s opponents from Lexington take the lead first.
Instead of being dampened, or letting their heads fall, the players push even harder — they will spend much of the half trying to force their opponents’ goal open.
It is an exercise in resilience. On multiple occasions, Lexington has the numbers for a counter-attack. On multiple occasions, these counters are thwarted. The defenders show a high level of steel and grace, as they do their part in keeping this game in check. The fans, always engaged, applaud each of these efforts.
After half an hour, the team’s hard work is rewarded. A ball lifted in from a set-piece is headed home by Allie Thornton, the team’s striker. It is her first goal of the season, and the third goal in team history.
Thornton’s expression is one of joy and relief. She, like many others on the team, has strong ties to Dallas women’s soccer.
She grew up in Arlington, and played at SMU in college.
Her goal breathes life into the Cotton Bowl. The fans are elated, and the team seems to gain a boost of energy through it.
This wave of enthusiasm, in fact, is so effective that in the second minute of stoppage time, after pinning Lexington back for what feels like forever, Amber Brooks’ lofted shot from outside the box is able to beat the keeper, who was off her line.
Despite going down early, the team was able to fight, and battle back. What a process it was to watch unfold.
Trinity lead at the half, 2-1.
For the Neil brothers, the development of a strong foundation within Dallas was paramount.
“We want to create our own identity and connect with the diversity that Dallas offers — that’s the arts community, that the multicultural community,” Trip Neil said. “It’s not just the soccer moms and dads that are out there, right? We’re really trying to connect with women. That’s a big part of our mission.”
In particular, Trinity and the Neil family have been trying to tap into the massive community and resource that is youth girls soccer in Dallas and the surrounding areas.
“We go out almost every weekend now to some sort of soccer tournament or soccer leagues, just trying to build awareness,” Charlie said. “There are so many people that are excited that we now have a women’s professional team and that we’re helping to fill that gap.”
At the game, in fact, it is girls night. More than 500 girls and young women are in attendance, as part of Trinity’s effort to show off the game to the youth soccer scene.
Dallas Horne, a father of a player on the Dallas-based Storm FC girls club soccer team, is inspired.
“What’s exciting is that (attending the game) shows the girls that there’s other opportunities out there in soccer besides just playing club soccer,” Horne said. “If they wanted to, they could work and play pro.”
But, the addition of Trinity to Dallas might mean the most to Chioma Ugobabu. She’s the team’s star winger and has had a lengthy career playing for top teams in Europe like Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur. She moved to Dallas when she was three years old, and grew up here before she went to college at Stanford and made a move to Arsenal to start her professional playing days.
Now, she’s returned to Dallas, getting a chance to play professional soccer in her hometown for the first time ever.
“I grew up playing recreational soccer here and club soccer here, and, you know, there was never a professional women’s team,” Ugobabu said. “That was something I was hoping would happen, and I was like, ‘Maybe it won’t happen when I’m playing, but it’s something I can support and be a fan of,’ so it’s amazing that in the last few years I’m playing, I can be a part of the first team to be playing in Dallas. I’m really excited to see helping the city gets behind us throughout the season.”
As eventful and exciting as the first half was, the second half had even more for the fans that night.
It started pretty dull for Trinity, though. Just seven minutes after the break, Lexington equalized, knotting the score at 2-2 on a strong counterattack.
Again, a spot where Trinity could have faltered.
But, again, the crowd and team were able to rally. It was as if they were one — chants rang out across the pitch, and a sense of urgency was made obvious.
They were swiftly rewarded for this surge in the 56th minute, when Ugobabu tapped home a loose ball rebound from a parried shot. Then, 11 minutes later, she struck from long range, placing a shot past the Lexington keeper and making the score 4-2.
It took roughly a quarter of an hour for one woman, whose connection to Dallas is strong, to take over the game. She and her teammates, through strong tactical play and resilience, turned the game — and its momentum — on a dime.
And, the hometown girls weren’t done yet. The hero of the first half, Thornton, was able to both tap home another goal off of a rebound in minute 78 and complete her hat-trick, the first in league history, with a stunner in stoppage time. These three goals were Thornton’s first in the season and in the league.
The final score was Dallas Trinity FC 6, Lexington SC 2. To the boxscore watcher, it seems an average blowout — Trinity had nine shots on goal and 58 percent of the possession.
But, to those who watched, Trinity had to fight and overcome. They fell behind. They came back stronger. They took a punch to start the second half, and they responded, in full force, with a haymaker.
In many ways, the story of the game is similar to what a new franchise might undergo, with the ups and downs of attendance, attention, and fan interest in what that team has to offer.
If this game tells the story of Dallas Trinity, it’s only halftime.
The best is yet to come.
